Megyn Kelly Cartoon

Wounded Warrior Project reportedly accused of wasting donor money

The charity for wounded veterans, the Wounded Warrior Project, is facing accusations of using donor money toward excessive spending on conferences and parties instead of on recovery programs, according to a CBS News report. 
Army Staff Sergeant Erick Millette, who returned from Iraq in 2006 with a bronze star and a purple heart, told CBS News he admired the charity’s work and took a job with the group in 2014 but quit after two years.
"Their mission is to honor and empower wounded warriors, but what the public doesn't see is how they spend their money," he told CBS News.
Millette said he witnessed lavish spending on staff, with big “catered” parties.
"Going to a nice fancy restaurant is not team building. Staying at a lavish hotel at the beach here in Jacksonville, and requiring staff that lives in the area to stay at the hotel is not team building," he told CBS News.
According to the charity's tax forms obtained by CBS News, spending on conferences and meetings went from $1.7 million in 2010, to $26 million in 2014, which is the same amount the group spends on combat stress recovery.
Two former of employees, who were so fearful of retaliation they asked that CBS News not show their faces on camera, said spending has skyrocketed since Steven Nardizzi took over as CEO in 2009, pointing to the 2014 annual meeting at a luxury resort in Colorado Springs.
"He rappelled down the side of a building at one of the all hands events. He's come in on a Segway, he's come in on a horse,” one employee told CBS News.
About 500 staff members attended the four-day conference in Colorado, which CBS News reported cost about $3 million.
Wounded Warrior Project declined CBS News' interview requests for Nardizzi, but instead sent Director of Alumni and a recipient of their services, Captain Ryan Kules, who denied there was excessive spending on conferences.
"It's the best use of donor dollars to ensure we are providing programs and services to our warriors and families at the highest quality," he said.
Kules added the charity did not spend $3 million on the Colorado conference, but he was not there and was unable to say what it did cost. He also told CBS News that the charity does not spend money on alcohol or engages in any other kind of excessive spending.

Full statement on Trump declining to participate in Fox News/Google Debate

If Trump is not going to be there I will probably not watch it. The ones that do will find it Boring.

As many of our viewers know, FOX News is hosting a sanctioned debate in Des Moines, Iowa on Thursday night, three days before the first votes of the 2016 election are cast in the Iowa Caucus. Donald Trump is refusing to debate seven of his fellow presidential candidates on stage that night, which is near unprecedented.
We’re not sure how Iowans are going to feel about him walking away from them at the last minute, but it should be clear to the American public by now that this is rooted in one thing – Megyn Kelly, whom he has viciously attacked since August and has now spent four days demanding be removed from the debate stage. Capitulating to politicians’ ultimatums about a debate moderator violates all journalistic standards, as do threats, including the one leveled by Trump’s campaign manager Corey Lewandowski toward Megyn Kelly.
In a call on Saturday with a FOX News executive, Lewandowski stated that Megyn had a ‘rough couple of days after that last debate’ and he ‘would hate to have her go through that again.’ Lewandowski was warned not to level any more threats, but he continued to do so. We can’t give in to terrorizations toward any of our employees.
Trump is still welcome at Thursday night’s debate and will be treated fairly, just as he has been during his 132 appearances on FOX News & FOX Business, but he can’t dictate the moderators or the questions.

Trump campaign says candidate won’t participate in Fox News/Google debate

Donald Trump’s campaign said Tuesday night that the Republican primary front-runner does not plan to participate in the upcoming Fox News/Google debate, shortly after the debate lineup was announced. 
Trump’s campaign confirmed the decision to Fox News.
The Republican presidential candidate already had said he probably would not be going, accusing Fox News of “playing games” with him. Trump has cited concerns with one of the debate moderators, Megyn Kelly – but apparently made his decision not to attend following press statements from Fox News.
Trump, though, took heat for his decision not to attend from his closest rival in the polls, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who accused Trump of being "afraid of Megyn Kelly."
“If Donald is afraid to defend his record, it speaks volumes,” Cruz said in a radio interview with Mark Levin, challenging Trump to a one-on-one debate.
The Fox News/Google debate is set for this Thursday in Des Moines, Iowa. It would mark the first GOP presidential primary debate that Trump has not attended.
His campaign put out a statement Tuesday night confirming the candidate “will not be participating in the FOX News debate and will instead host an event in Iowa to raise money for the Veterans and Wounded Warriors.”
Addressing the matter on “The Kelly File,” Kelly later said: “I’ll be there. … The debate will go on with or without Mr. Trump.”
Despite his complaints, he had easily qualified as one of the eight candidates in the prime-time event.
Fox News announced the candidate lineup for that debate earlier Tuesday evening, and the qualifying participants were:
Trump; Texas Sen. Ted Cruz; Florida Sen. Marco Rubio; retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson; former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush; New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie; Ohio Gov. John Kasich; and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul.
The participants qualifying for the earlier, 7 p.m. ET debate were:
Former HP CEO Carly Fiorina; former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee; former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum; and former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore.
The lineup reflects a polling boost for Paul, who did not qualify for the most recent Fox Business Network prime-time debate earlier this month, and declined to participate in that program’s evening event.
This time, Paul suggested he’ll attend, saying the campaign is “very excited” about qualifying for the main stage.
Meanwhile, Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes has defended Megyn Kelly amid the criticism from Trump. He issued a statement earlier to The Washington Post saying, “Megyn Kelly is an excellent journalist, and the entire network stands behind her. She will absolutely be on the debate stage on Thursday night."
Megyn Kelly has withstood Trump’s eruptions since the August debate, when he accused her of purposely attacking him. As part of Trump’s explanation for not participating in Thursday’s debate he called the “Kelly File” host a “lightweight” and “third-rate reporter.”
Trump’s campaign manager Corey Lewandowski even threatened to ramp up the vicious verbal attacks Trump has repeated since the first August debate.
“In a call on Saturday with a FOX News executive, Lewandowski stated that Megyn had a ‘rough couple of days after that last debate’ and he ‘would hate to have her go through that again,’” a Fox News statement said late Tuesday.
“Lewandowski was warned not to level any more threats, but he continued to do so. We can’t give in to terrorizations toward any of our employees,” the statement added.
READ THE FOX NEWS STATEMENT ON TRUMP DECLINING TO PARTICIPATE IN FOX NEWS/GOOGLE DEBATE
Trump, speaking earlier in Iowa, said he’d probably raise money for veterans instead of doing the event. And speaking with Fox News’ Bret Baier, Trump said he “didn’t like the press releases Fox put out.”
The Fox News/Google debate in Des Moines this Thursday will be the candidates’ last before next week’s Iowa caucuses – which kicks off the Republican presidential nominating process.
In the run-up, the candidates are ramping up their ad spending and shoe-leather campaigning, while going after each other in the process.
After clashing at the most recent GOP debate, Iowa front-runners Trump and Cruz have only turned up their attacks in recent days – particularly as Trump regains his Iowa lead over Cruz in most polls. The race, though, remains close. The latest Quinnipiac University poll showed Trump leading Cruz just 31-29 percent in Iowa.
Cruz said Tuesday that “no state is a must-win for us.” But the reality is his campaign is fighting hard for an Iowa victory, as Trump maintains a huge polling lead in the next contest: the New Hampshire primary.
One new ad from a Cruz-supporting super PAC is accusing Trump of being aligned with Democrats on “government-run health care.” Another from the Cruz campaign returns to the well of criticizing Trump’s “New York values,” while playing a clip of him saying, “How stupid are the people of Iowa?”
Trump, meanwhile, called Cruz a “liar” in an MSNBC interview Tuesday.
“Nobody likes him,” Trump said, attempting to draw a contrast with his own business experience by saying Cruz can’t make a deal with anybody.
The debate on Thursday will be moderated by Fox News anchors Bret Baier, Megyn Kelly and Chris Wallace.
The candidate lineup was decided based on the results of national, New Hampshire and Iowa polling – released before 5 p.m. ET on Tuesday.
To qualify for the prime-time debate, a candidate had to place in the top six in an average of recent national polls, or in the top five in an average of recent Iowa or New Hampshire polls. ‎The evening debate features other candidates who received a minimum 1 percent in at least one recent national poll.

Oregon militia leader Ammon Bundy, 7 others arrested after gunfight kills 1, injures 1

The leader of a group of armed protesters who had occupied a federal wildlife refuge in eastern Oregon for 24 days was arrested along with four others Tuesday after a traffic stop prompted gunfire that left one person dead and another injured.
The FBI and Oregon State Police arrested Ammon Bundy, 40, his brother Ryan, 43, Brian Cavalier, 44, Shawna Cox, 59, and Ryan Payne, 32, at around 4:25 p.m. local time on U.S. Highway 395.
Three other people were arrested separately. The FBI said Joseph O'Shaughnessy, 45, and Peter Santilli, 50, were arrested in the nearby town of Burns, Ore. Hours later, authorities said Jon Ritzheimer, 32, turned himself into the Peoria, Ariz. police department.
The FBI said all eight face a federal felony charge of conspiracy to impede officers of the United States from discharging their official duties through the use of force, intimidation or threats.
Neither the FBI nor Oregon State Police released details about what set off the gunfire at the traffic stop. One of those arrested, described only as a man, suffered non-life-threatening wounds and was treated at a hospital, the agencies said.
Another man "who was a subject of a federal probable cause arrest" was killed in the shootout. The Oregonian reported that the deceased man was 55-year-old Robert Finicum. The paper cited Finicum's daughter in making the identification. Authorities said no other information about the deceased would be released pending formal identification by the local medical examiner's office.
The protesters were heading to a public meeting in the town of John Day, about 70 miles north of Burns, to address local residents about the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge when the traffic stop took place, law enforcement officials told Fox News.
The Oregonian newspaper reported several hundred people had gathered at the John Day Senior Center on Tuesday evening and were told the "guest speakers" would not be appearing.
The Harney County Hospital in Burns was placed on lockdown out of concern that the protesters may cause a disturbance there.
Ammon Bundy's group, calling itself the Citizens for Constitutional Freedom, seized the refuge's headquarters on Jan. 2 in protest of what they viewed as onerous federal land restrictions, as well as the prison sentences of two local ranchers convicted of setting fires. Law enforcement officers converged on the wildlife refuge after the arrests and were expected to remain at the site throughout the night; it was unclear how many people, if any, remained in the buildings.
Ammon and Ryan Bundy are the sons of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who was involved in a high-profile 2014 standoff with the government over grazing rights.
Many residents of Harney County, where the refuge is located, have been among those demanding that Bundy leave. Many sympathize with his criticism of federal land management policies of public lands but opposed the refuge takeover. They feared violence could erupt.
Ammon Bundy recently had begun traveling into Grant County to try to drum up more sympathy for his cause.
"I am pleased that the FBI has listened to the concerns of the local community and responded to the illegal activity occurring in Harney County by outside extremists," Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., said in a written statement. "The leaders of this group are now in custody and I hope that the remaining individuals occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge will peacefully surrender so this community can begin to heal the deep wounds that this illegal activity has created over the last month."
The state police said it would investigate the officer-involved shooting, with help from the Deschutes County Major Incident Team and the Harney County District Attorney's Office.

Hillary email Cartoon

Trump isn't shooting blanks: Why National Review's attack may not matter

There’s been lots of chatter over Donald Trump proclaiming at a rally that he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue without losing an iota of his support.
I suggest we lower the outrage meter. This is Trump’s in-your-face sense of humor, and one of the reasons that thousands flock to his rallies is that you never know how far he’s going to go in pushing the envelope.
It was not the best joke in an era of mass shootings, to be sure. But everyone gets what Trump was trying to say. No outrageous comment, no media attack, no revelation of a past liberal position seems to shake the loyalty of his fiercest fans.
This was underscored yesterday by new Fox News polls, giving Trump an 11-point lead over Ted Cruz among likely Iowa caucus-goers, and a 17-point edge over Cruz in New Hampshire. Remember when it looked like Cruz had Iowa almost wrapped up?
While it remains to be seen how many Trump supporters actually turn out—43 percent in the Iowa poll would be first-time caucus voters—it’s little wonder that Trump is oozing confidence. He’s not going to worry about verbal missteps. He’s not going to worry about Michael Bloomberg. And he’s not going to worry about National Review.
The magazine’s all-out assault came shortly after I wrapped my Las Vegas interview with Trump. But it underscores how his biggest problem hasn’t been the liberal press but a precinct of the profession that is usually firmly entrenched in the GOP’s corner: the conservative media.
The journalistic coup attempt spearheaded by National Review is so deeply revealing, both of the nature of Trump’s candidacy and a cultural divide on the right.
Trump is not running as a true-blue conservative. That is why media reports of the liberal positions he took and Democrats he befriended in the 1990s, a recent staple of Ted Cruz’s attacks, have failed to dent his armor. He presents an amalgam of positions, from a hard-right stance on illegal immigration to a center-left view on protecting entitlement programs to a liberal appeal to tax hedge-fund guys.
Rich Lowry and the editors of National Review are right: The Donald is not their kind of candidate. He has no interest in that. He is selling an image of strength and success, packaged with plenty of bombast, that transcends the usual litmus-test politics.
When I interviewed Trump in Las Vegas for Sunday’s “Media Buzz,” I asked whether he has, through some kind of weird alchemy, become the establishment candidate, as Cruz says. Trump made no attempt to dispute it, calling the Beltway power brokers “great people” and citing Bob Dole’s criticism of the Texas senator. “I’m a dealmaker,” he said proudly.
By recruiting 22 writers to attack Trump, by calling him an “opportunist” and a “huckster” and a “menace to American conservatism,” National Review is standing up for what it believes. Trump responded in typical fashion, attacking the messenger as a faltering franchise, as he has done with Politico and other media outlets. National Review is “a failing publication that has lost its way,” he said, with its influence “at an all-time low. Sad!” And yes, Trump said the magazine’s founder, William F. Buckley, would be ashamed, despite the fact that Buckley described him in 2000 as a self-regarding demagogue.
My colleague Mercedes Schlapp, who worked in the Bush White House, says most Republican voters don’t read National Review, portraying its editors and writers as living in a bubble. But every movement needs its thinkers to debate and deconstruct its philosophical principles.
No print publication has the influence it once had, and NR has certainly gotten a tsunami of media attention for its assault by recruiting the likes of Bill Kristol, editor of the rival Weekly Standard.
But Trump benefits from a newer and brasher wing of the conservative media, the more populist arena of Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Breitbart and others who may be more in touch with the grass roots than editors who live in Manhattan and Georgetown and attend conferences and cruises.  
National Review provides the intellectual backbone of the conservative movement, but it is also part of a cultural elite that many conservatives believe has let them down. Trump, the street fighter who emerged from a tabloid culture, has no interest, and no particular need, to win over the intellectuals. He is a brawler fighting a populist campaign. They are what George Wallace, in a very different context, once referred to as pointy-heads.
For National Review and its brethren, smaller government and a muscular foreign policy are the essence of why they fight the policy wars. These positions are not what motivate Trump, who often notes that he opposed the Iraq war, championed by the neoconservatives.
This same dynamic is at the heart of his battles with Fox News, where Trump has been pounded by the likes of George Will and Steve Hayes, along with Charles Krauthammer, Jonah Goldberg and Lowry, all associated with National Review.
We saw this same disruption in 2008 when Sarah Palin, who endorsed Trump this week, became the darling of Kristol and other media conservatives. When such commentators as David Brooks, David Frum and Kathleen Parker broke with the orthodoxy and called Palin unqualified to be vice president, they suffered a severe backlash.
Perhaps inevitably, things get personal between journalists and commentators who find themselves on opposite sides of the same movement.
“Some conservatives have made it their business to make excuses for Trump and duly get pats on the head from him. Count us out,” National Review writes.
It may have been a misstep for the magazine to go beyond using its ideological firepower against Trump and organize what looks like a political campaign to block him from winning the nomination.
Trump jokes about shooting people, but he may not need to expend much ammunition on a bunch of opinion folks who make their living with words.

Fox News Poll: Sanders up by 22 points in New Hampshire

Bernie Sanders commands a 22-point lead over Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire, according to the latest Fox News Poll.
He tops Clinton by a 56-34 percent margin among likely Democratic primary voters.  That’s an improvement for Sanders from just two weeks ago when he was up by 13 points (50-37 percent).
Martin O’Malley holds steady with three percent support.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE NEW HAMPSHIRE POLL RESULTS
Most Sanders (78 percent) and Clinton supporters (76 percent) have a high degree of vote certainty.
Among just the subgroup of voters who say they will “definitely” vote in the Democratic primary, Sanders leads by 19 points (55-36 percent).
The poll finds Sanders retains his commanding lead among younger voters (+39 points), and also expands his advantage among a key Clinton constituency nationally:  voters over age 45.  He’s up 13-points among this group, while he was ahead by just 4 points earlier this month.
In addition, the Vermont senator has widened his lead among both men and women.  Women back him by 17 points in the new poll (55-38 percent), up from a 7-point edge in early January.  Men favor him by 29 points (was 23 points).
A third of likely Democratic voters in New Hampshire feel “betrayed” by politicians from their party (33 percent).  These folks go overwhelmingly for Sanders:  74-16 percent.
Nearly half of Clinton’s backers would be happy with Sanders as the nominee (46 percent), but only about a third of Sanders’s supporters say they would be satisfied with Clinton (35 percent).
In fact, 19 percent of those backing Sanders say they would stay home in November if Clinton is the nominee.  That's more than double the seven percent of Clinton supporters who say the same about Sanders.
New Hampshire Democrats are most likely to want a nominee who is honest and trustworthy (30 percent) and cares about people like them (25 percent).  Sanders is favored among voters who pick each of these traits.
The Fox News Poll is conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R). The phone poll was conducted January 18-21, 2016, with live interviewers (landline and cellphone).  This New Hampshire poll was among a sample of 801 registered voters selected from a statewide voter file.  Results based on the sample of 400 Democratic primary voters have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus five percentage points.